Use AirPlay to Watch DVDs on my AppleTV?

Just got an AppleTV and I’m pretty excited about it, particular the ability to wirelessly mirror whatever’s showing on my Mac screen. Means I can show my Mom how to use Facebook, finally, so she’ll stop calling me! I also want to use this setup to watch DVDs but something’s broken on my system: whenever I try to watch a DVD with DVD Player and AirPlay is enabled, the video display is a black and white checkerboard graphic rather than the actual movie. How do I fix it so I can watch DVD movies via AirPlay??

There’s actually nothing broken in the configuration you specify, what you’re hitting is a built-in limitation of DVD Player that’s tied to digital rights management (DRM) requirements for the Apple DVD playback code. You can see that’s the case because you can watch an iTunes movie via AirPlay without the slightest hiccup.
The concept behind this is probably something to do with the definition of “broadcast” rights with a consumer DVD playback system according to some Byzantine MPAA regulation that Apple has to follow so as not to get in trouble with the big players in Hollywood.The fact that you can still plug in your TV directly via HDMI and watch a movie full screen (particularly easy if you have an HDMI plug on the Mac directly, as the latest generation sports) presumably falls under some other nuance of the law as that’s an alternative approach to having the DVD in your computer but the movie shown on the TV.
Whatever the nuance here, it’s sure annoying and a lot of people have bumped into this limitation of DVD Player.
The good news? There’s a nice alternative DVD player that will sidestep the entire issue and work perfectly with AirPlay!
Let me show you the steps involved. First off, here’s what you’d see both on the Mac screen and the TV screen if you try to watch a DVD while you have AirPlay pushing your video signal to the TV (go into Apple -> System Preferences… -> Display to enable “AirPlay Mirroring”):

Crazy, eh? No warning message, no pop-up “can’t view movies in AirPlay video mirror mode”, nothing. Just the checkerboard of death.
Oh, okay, maybe it’s not quite that dramatic!
Instead, a slick free app called VLC Media Player can be quickly downloaded from here: videolan.org. Grab a copy and start it up.
Here’s what you’ll see:

VLC turns out to be a really useful video player because in addition to working with DVDs in an AirPlay friendly manner, it can also let you see WMA, AVI, MKS and many other video files, far more than iTunes can handle.
To watch a DVD, the easiest way is to insert the DVD, then quit DVD Player. Now the DVD icon is on the Desktop, so drag it onto VLC and it’ll start playing the movie within just a few seconds:

You can see I’m watching Skyfall. Great movie, and fun to be able to enjoy on my computer, but being able to wirelessly push it to my TV with AirPlay? Here’s what that looks like on my Sony Bravia:

One thing to warn you about before you zip away to try it: The audio might be still coming out of your computer. To ensure that too is being piped to the AppleTV, go into the Audio settings and pick AirPlay:

Now, pass the popcorn, the movie’s about to get really good…

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I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by
buying you a cup of coffee!

thanks for the info – I thought my MBP was the issue. Very frustrating… it should tell you why it won’t work. This works great. I wanted to use it for my home workout video. It’s too hard to see the TV when you’re doing pushups etc. Now I have two screens, my MBP on the floor and the TV on the wall

I wish this worked for me! I have a brand new MacBook, less than a year old and just bought an Apple TV for Christmas. Of course, I can not use Air Play but this solution doesn’t work either as the picture is totally unwatchable- pixelated beyond belief. I’m pretty annoyed that the Apple TV doesn’t work with DVDs; it’s the whole reason I purchased it rather than a DVD player! I just want to watch with my daughter, not sell tickets to a show.

I have to say that the streaming and wireless AirPlay features on the AppleTV are lackluster at best. A few days ago when I wanted to stream a soccer game from NBCSN, I first tried AirPlay and even on my high-speed media network system, it was choppy, so I ended up just running an HDMI cable from my MacBook Pro to my HDTV. Worked much better. Might just be tech limitations, however, but… but then again, Netflix does pretty darn well and its source is far, far upstream compared to a computer in the very same room. Maybe Apple will release Apple TV HD some day or something!

Hi Dave Taylor
I tried VLC and it dosn’t work. It just makes everything stop while a working progress bar and a few ticks from the DVD slot suggests that a movie might actually come to the screen. Only, it doesn’t.
I waited several minutes and nothing happened.
Any suggestions?
Because I would really like this to work…

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